Middle East Centre Booktalk

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Welcome to Middle East Centre Booktalk – the Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East. These are some of the books written by members of our community, or the books our community are talking about. Tune in to follow author interviews and book chat. Every episode features a different, recently published book and is hosted by a different Oxford academic.

  1. DEC 17

    Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador

    In this seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador’. In this Gender and Sexuality Series seminar, Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla, author, is in conversation with Professor Eugene Rogan, MEC Director, about her new book ‘Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador’. This seminar was held at the MEC on 25th November 2025.

    54 min

  2. NOV 13

    Food and Language: Rhetorical-Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage / الطعام والكلام: حفريات بلاغية ثقافية في التراث العربي

    Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025, discusses his book ‘Food and Language: Rhetorical-Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan. Seminar in English and Arabic. Professor Said Laouadi, winner of the Sheikh Zayed Book Award 2025 for Literary and Art Criticism, discusses his book ‘الطعام والكلام: حفريات بلاغية ثقافية في التراث العربي’ / ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), with Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre at St Antony’s College. Introduced by Professor Michael Willis, HM King Mohammed VI Fellow in Moroccan and Mediterranean Studies. About the book: Published in 2023, this work offers a critique of the complex relation between rhetoric and food in Arab heritage, analysing literary texts from poetry to proverbs and stories from a broad cultural perspective. With its in-depth analysis and broad scope, his research enriches rhetorical studies with new, unconventional approaches. About the author: Said Laouadi is a Moroccan academic and professor of rhetoric and discourse analysis at the Faculty of Arabic Language at Cadi Ayyad University in Marrakech, where he also serves as Vice Dean for Scientific Research and International Cooperation and heads the Laboratory for Methodological Integration in Discourse Analysis. Laouadi oversees the ‘Academic Picks’ programme, which hosts leading Arab researchers in critical and linguistic studies. Laouadi serves as a member of judging panels for several Arab and Moroccan literary awards, while also contributing to various specialised academic journals as an editor and reviewer. His research explores the intersection of rhetoric and culture, with notable publications such as ‘The Kitchen of the Novel: Food in Fiction from Visuality to Weaving’ (2024) and ‘Food and Language: Cultural Excavations in Arab Heritage’ (2023), along with studies on literature, imagery, and aesthetics in poetic discourse”.

    58 min

  3. NOV 11

    Safe Corridor

    This seminar discusses the inaugural Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize winner, ‘Safe Corridor’; a bold, unforgettable novel of war, imagination, and survival. Kurdish-Syrian novelist, Jan Dost; translator, Professor Marilyn Booth; Director of the Bait AlGhasham DarArab International Translation Prize, Ali Al Mujaini; and Founder and Director of DarArab for Publishing & Translation, Nasser Al Badri, all discuss Dost’s novel ‘Safe Corridor’, with Professor of Turkish Literature and Fellow of St Antony’s College, Laurent Mignon, as Chair.

    59 min

  4. JUN 3

    Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition

    In this Contemporary Islamic Studies seminar, Dr Haroon Bashir discusses his new book ‘Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition’ published in January 2025 by Oxford University Press Bio: Dr Haroon Bashir is Senior Lecturer in Islamic Studies at the Markfield Institute of Higher Education. He also serves as the Director of the Markfield Centre for Contemporary Islam. His research focuses on Islam's conversation with modernity and contemporary Islamic thought. His recent book, which he will be discussing today, was published in January 2025 by Oxford University Press and is entitled ‘Slavery, Abolition and Islam: Debating Freedom in the Islamic Tradition’. Abstract: The abolition of slavery remains a relatively new concept in human history and scholars from all religious traditions have attempted to navigate the religious and ethical questions raised by the historical acceptance of the practice. In this seminar, Haroon Bashir explores how scholars promoting abolition in the name of Islam transformed the debate around Islam and slavery. The seminar explores how abolitionism became the hegemonic position within contemporary Islamic thought and provides a genealogy of ‘Islamic abolitionist’ thought. Abolitionist arguments were not simply accepted when originally articulated, with defenders of the slave trade using the weight of historical tradition to emphasise the legitimacy of slavery. The strongly contested debates that ensued had huge ramifications for understandings of authority, tradition, and modernity within Islamic thought that are as present as they are past.

    53 min

  5. MAY 8

    East of Empire: Egypt, India, and the World between the Wars

    In this joint seminar with the Asian Studies Centre, Dr Erin MB O’Halloran, University of Cambridge, presents her new book 'East of Empire' (2025 Stanford University Press). Chaired by Professor Faisal Devji (St Antony’s College). For many years, scholars, politicians and activists have drawn comparisons between the partitions of India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine, two seismic events which took place mere months apart. Yet they were far more than comparable: the two partitions were in fact deeply interconnected, and share origins in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire after World War I. In ‘East of Empire’, Erin O’Halloran reveals how the crisis in British Mandate Palestine created a crucial bridge between the Indian Khilafat movement of the early 1920s and Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s demand, from March 1940 onward, that Muslims of the subcontinent be given a state of their own.

    50 min

  6. MAR 24

    Understanding Syria through Syrian Voices: Refugees’ Stories of Revolution, War, and the Struggle for Home

    In this joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, Wendy Pearlman, Professor at Northwestern University, shares personal testimonies collected from displaced Syrians around the world. Abstract: Over 13 years, Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their lives under a brutal authoritarian regime, the popular uprising against it, and the subsequent war and refugee crisis. In this presentation, she shares and explores their stories collected in her two books, ‘We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria’ (2017) and ‘The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora’ (2024). These personal testimonials offer a human lens on the stunning recent collapse of the Assad regime, while also offering broader lessons about migration, belonging, and the search for dignity. Biography: Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Professor of Arts and Sciences and professor of political science at Northwestern University, and Co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal ‘Perspectives on Politics’. A scholar of Middle East politics, social movements, conflict processes, and forced migration, she is the author of six books and more than 40 journal articles or book chapters. This is a joint seminar with Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre. Chaired by Dawn Chatty, Emerita Professor of Anthropology and Forced Migration and former Director of the Refugee Studies Centre, 2011-2014.

    50 min

  7. MAR 11

    From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics

    In this Friday seminar, Jérôme Drevon discusses his book ‘From Jihad to Politics: How Syrian Jihadis Embraced Politics’ (OUP 2024). Bio Jérôme Drevon is senior analyst on Jihad and Modern Conflict at the International Crisis Group (ICG). Jerome studies the evolution of non-state armed groups with a special emphasis on Jihadis, especially how they can become more pragmatic overtime. For the past few years, he has also focused more thoroughly on how other actors - including states and humanitarians - can engage some of these groups, who now rule millions of civilians worldwide. Jerome has conducted extensive field research in conflict zones, including Syria, where he interviewed hundreds of Jihadi militants and foreign fighters from their military, political, and religious leaders to their foot soldiers – to gain a deeper understanding of their changing political views in armed conflicts. Abstract The Syrian regime unleashed unprecedented violence to suppress large-scale non-violent protests amid the Arab uprisings. Hundreds of armed groups formed throughout the country to defend the protesters and fight back. However, in contrast to other conflicts previously dominated by al-Qaeda and Islamic State, the two largest Syrian Jihadi groups, Ahrar al-Sham and then Jabhat al-Nusra, rejected global jihad and began to cultivate new ties with the population, other armed opposition groups, and even foreign states. This strategic shift is a response to the Jihadi paradox--a realization that while Jihadis excel at leading insurgencies, they fail to achieve political victories. In From Jihad to Politics, Jérôme Drevon offers an examination of the Syrian armed opposition, tracing the emergence of Jihadi groups in the conflict, their dominance, and their political transformation. Drawing upon field research and interviews with Syrian insurgents in northwestern Syria and Turkey, Drevon demonstrates how the context of a local conflict can shape armed groups' behavior in unexpected ways. Further, he marshals unique evidence from the Arab world's most intense conflict to explain why the trajectory of the transnational Jihadi movement has altered course in recent years.

    46 min

  8. MAR 7

    Genocide in Gaza

    On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’ (Irish Pages Press, 2025). On Tuesday 18 February 2025, the Middle East Centre hosted the launch for St Antony’s Emeritus Fellow, Professor Avi Shlaim’s, new book ‘Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestine’ (Irish Pages Press, 2025). This is a recording of Avi Shlaim’s talk, chaired by MEC Director, Professor Eugene Rogan, and featuring the Founder and Editor of Irish Pages, Chris Agee. The book is a Times Literary Supplement book of the year 2024. Copies are available to purchase directly from the publisher, The Irish Pages Press here: irishpages.org/product/genocide-in-gaza Book Abstract: The brutal assault launched by Israel on the Gaza Strip in in response to the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023 was a major landmark in the blood-soaked history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This was the eighth Israeli military offensive in Gaza since Operation Cast Lead of December 2008. But it was the most lethal and destructive, making the enclave uninhabitable. In this book Avi Shlaim places Israel’s policy towards the Gaza Strip under an uncompromising lens. He argues that these recurrent attacks — what Israeli generals chillingly call “mowing the lawn” — are the inevitable result of Zionist settler colonialism whose basic objective is the elimination of the native population. In this war, however, Israel has gone beyond land-grabbing and ethnic cleansing to commit the crime of all crimes — genocide. Providing Israel with arms as well as diplomatic protection at the UN, make America, Britain, and European Union not only complicit but partners in Israel’s war crimes. Noam Chomsky observed that “Settler colonialism is the most extreme and vicious form of imperialism”. There is no better illustration of this fundamental truth than Israel’s long and savage war against the Palestinian people. “Clear, forthright and cogent, Genocide in Gaza is essential reading for both those who understand little of Palestine-Israel and those who have followed the unfolding horrors for decades. As a historian, Shlaim is meticulous, thoughtful and robust. As a person who has lived in three worlds – Iraqi, Israeli and British, with a Jewish religion and an Arab ethnicity – few understand it as well on a personal level. His political vision is clear- sighted, his ideal humane.” Selma Dabbagh, novelist and human rights lawyer

    39 min
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About

Welcome to Middle East Centre Booktalk – the Oxford podcast on new books about the Middle East. These are some of the books written by members of our community, or the books our community are talking about. Tune in to follow author interviews and book chat. Every episode features a different, recently published book and is hosted by a different Oxford academic.

Information

  • Creator
    Oxford University
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2025
  • Episodes
    37
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Oxford University
  • Show Website
    Middle East Centre Booktalk

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